The Vitruvian Man is a metaphor for the “ideal man” by feminist posthuman philosopher Rosi Braidotti (2013) as a proxy for eurocentric humanist ideals. The first half of this paper extends Braidotti's concept by thinking about the metaphor of the “ideal nurse” (Vitruvian nurse) and how this metaphor contributes to racism, oppression, and burnout in nursing and might restrict the professionalization of nursing. The Vitruvian nurse is an idealized and perfected form of a nurse with self‐sacrificial language (re)producing self‐sacrificing expectations. (...) The second half of this paper looks at how regulatory frameworks (using the example of UK's Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct) institutionalize the conditions of possibility through collective imaginations. The domineering expectations found within the Vitruvian nurse metaphor and further codified by regulatory frameworks give rise to boredom and burnout. The paper ends by suggesting possible ways to diffract regulatory frameworks to practice with affirmative ethics and reduce feelings of self‐sacrifice and exhaustion among nurses. (shrink)

Nursing work centers around attending to a person's health during many of life's most vulnerable moments, from birth to death. Given the high‐stakes nature of this work, it is essential for nurses to critically reflect on their individual and collective impact, which can range from healing to harmful. The purpose of this paper is to use a philosophical inquiry approach and a critical lens to explore the potential influence of critical pedagogy (how we learn what we learn) on nursing praxis (...) (why we do what we do) with the aim of disrupting stigma and discrimination within the profession. This paper draws on the works of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and bell hooks to alert readers to particular windows of opportunity where an intentional adoption of critical pedagogy in nursing praxis may help the profession think differently about two important and related topics: relational violence and peer‐led knowledge mobilization. As a practice‐based and theoretically grounded profession, nurses often strive to bridge the theoretical with the practical and the individual with the systemic. Thus, developing a robust and philosophically rooted disciplinary body of knowledge is particularly important to help us defensibly grapple with the notions of truth and ethics that shape our work's very essence and impact. (shrink)

Since the era of deinstitutionalisation, many clinical approaches have emerged to enable the care and treatment of people suffering from mental illness. In recent years, the use of coercive approaches in the community (e.g., outpatient commitment or community treatment orders) has also increased internationally. Although nurses' role regarding these coercive approaches is central and significant, few empirical and theoretical writings have tackled this controversial nursing practice. The purpose of this paper is to analyse coercive nursing care through the lens of (...) French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of ‘societies of control’. Taking up Michel Foucault's work on disciplinary power, Deleuze explores how the move from the striated spaces of closed institutions to the smooth spaces of societies of control took place since the middle of the 20th century. According to Deleuze, the overall objective of ‘societies of control’ is no longer simply to govern deviant behaviour in closed environments (e.g., psychiatric hospitals and prisons) but to ensure a regime of unrelentless surveillance in the open spaces of our communities. (shrink)